Inner Motivation #1

An Inspiring Take on What Influences You

How do you motivate yourself? The Cherokee Indians say that everybody is internally motivated, not just the self-motivated! They know that you have both a black wolf and a white wolf motivating you.

Are you Self-Motivated?

The self-motivated decide on their own goals and then pursue them. They see the black wolf's manipulations, its insistence on self-destructive actions and negative behaviors; they also hear the white wolf quietly suggesting positive actions with beneficial results. Their secret of success is to make up their own minds, they listen to both -and then choose their own path.

Which wolf do you generally listen to? Your black wolf's job is to give you undesirable experiences. Since you'd never choose such an experience if you knew the probable outcome, it has to deceive you to do its job. The white wolf's job is to suggest actions with desirable consequences.

Your wolves feed when you give them energy - pay them attention - and both do their job amazingly well.

Is Your Black Wolf You?

The black wolf is very persuasive, very cunning, very devious, and very insistent. It's a master of deception, and has no qualms about lying. When you believe your black wolf is actually you - that you are it - that's one of its most effective deceptions. But it's actually just one part of you, like your body, that you have! If you fall into this trap, you believe that whatever it wants, you want! Then self sabotage dominates your life.

If you've ever had a thought and later realized that's not you, you have proof that the black wolf is not you. You need to do this just once for you to know that you are not your black wolf. For this to happen even once, you can't be! Then you'll change your life by realizing, without a shadow of doubt, that you and it are separate. But the black wolf doesn't give up, it will continue its attempts to mislead you here, so reflect on this secret of success very carefully.

Fearful Emotions

The black wolf will try to motivate you emotionally as well as try to hijack your rational faculties. It will commandeer your emotions to make you fearful of the outcome. You can change your life by facing your fears. In fact, experience shows that you can't run away from your fears, they just reappear later.

When someone defends their stance emotionally, it's been said that's only because they haven't given it enough thought to defend it rationally. So when someone gets emotional and insists you believe them without giving you persuasive evidence to change your mind, their black wolf is in control!

The black wolf doesn't just hijack your thoughts and emotions, it also snaps and snarls in its attempts to get you to feed it. It will try to frighten you into giving it energy, into doing its bidding. Yet whenever you feed the black wolf, it becomes stronger.

Your White Wolf

The white wolf is very quiet, calm, and never insists. It gives you positive suggestions, and only proposes actions which are beneficial in the long-term. It's clear that reality is all that is, er ... real, and everything else is deception of one kind or another. Honesty and integrity are the hallmarks of your white wolf.

The white wolf wants you to enjoy desirable results, to learn from experience and only accept empirical, reality-based, evidence. The secret of success is for you to have a free choice, it wants you to rationally consider the likely outcome of your actions. Then you're neither being gullible nor cynical, you're skeptical. It makes so much sense to become open-minded and willing to explore the hard evidence.

Food for Thought

"Honesty and integrity are crucial for success. If you can fake these, you've got it made!"

- Author unknown

This article was originally published at selfgrowth.com/articles/an-inspiring-take-on-what-influences-you-part-1-in-the-inner-motivation-series